More From Dr. Gupta

If you snore at night and feel drowsy all day, then you may be one of the millions of Americans who have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Most people with the sleep disorder don’t know they have it, but if left untreated, OSA can lead to serious complications.

"People with sleep apnea have been shown to be at a higher risk for cardiovascular diseases," says Thomas Roth, PhD, director of the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

OSA, the most common form of sleep apnea, occurs when muscles in the back of the throat relax, disrupting a person’s breathing while they’re asleep. Central sleep apnea, a rarer form in which the brain doesn’t send signals to breathing muscles, is often the result of another condition such as Parkinson’s disease or stroke.

Anyone can have OSA, but there are several risk factors. Being overweight can lead to fat deposits around the upper airway that obstruct breathing. A study published in 2013 in the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests that the obesity epidemic may have been responsible for as much as a 55 percent jump in sleep apnea cases over the past 20 years.

"Weight loss can be helpful in reducing the severity of sleep apnea or even curing it with mild forms of the condition," says Ashish Adlakha, MD, medical director of the Middlesex Hospital Comprehensive Sleep Disorders Center in Middletown, Connecticut.

Age and gender are also factors: Most sleep apnea patients are over age 60, and men are twice as likely to have it as women. People with naturally narrow throats, or who develop enlarged tonsils or adenoids, have a greater risk, as do people who smoke or drink alcohol.

Sleep apnea is more than a mere annoyance: It can lead to potentially life-threatening health conditions. "When a person has chronic sleep deprivation and they're waking up a lot during the night, there are frequent drops in blood oxygen levels, which trigger the response of the systemic nervous system," Dr. Adlakha says.

These "stresses to the nervous system and low oxygen levels have a big impact on blood pressure and a person's cardiovascular system and metabolism," says B. Tucker Woodson, MD, director of the Froedtert Hospital/Medical College of Wisconsin Sleep Disorders Program in Milwaukee.

Lifestyle changes, such as weight loss, exercise, and quitting smoking and drinking, are recommended for anyone with OSA. More serious cases can be treated with a device known as a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine that delivers air pressure to keep airway passages open. The patient has to wear a mask while sleeping, which can be an annoyance, and the air pressure can cause dry mouth and nose.

"It's a big problem in trying to treat the disease, because people don’t use it correctly or as much as they're supposed to," Dr. Roth says.

Another treatment option is wearing a mouthpiece similar to a dental mouth guard to correct jaw or tongue problems and keep the throat open. In severe OSA cases where no other treatment proves effective, there are surgical options to relieve airway blockages.

"The biggest reason we treat sleep apnea is to improve a person’s quality of life, as it can make almost any other condition a person has worse," says Woodson. “If you're not sleeping well, good health is hard to come by."

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